MELALEUCAS CHOKING LAND PURCHASE PLAN

Palm Beach County taxpayers are paying $100 million for environmentally sensitive land that will become worthless because no money is available to maintain it, county officials said on Monday.

"If you don't do anything, after (all the land is purchased) you'll just sit back and watch it deteriorate," said Richard Walesky, director of the county's Department of Environmental Resources Management.

Already, county environmentalists said, one of the 14 sites that was to be purchased probably will not be because it has been overrun with exotic trees.

In less than two years, vegetation-choking melaleuca trees have taken over much of the roughly 600-acre tract north of Okeechobee Boulevard. Officials are considering abandoning the planned purchase because it would cost at least $500,000 to remove the exotic trees from the land, valued at about $1 million.

"It's just an example of what can happen with an exotic invasion," said Barry Smith, a county environmentalist. "If left untended, other sites could quickly be invaded with exotics."

At the urging of Walesky and Smith, citizens who are overseeing the land buy program agreed that county commissioners should establish a land maintenance trust fund.

However, committee members disagreed where the money should come from.

As proposed, contributions would come from those who own the thousands of acres that are to be purchased.

Currently, landowners are asked to sell their land at a discount. The discounts already have saved the county millions of dollars.

However, under one trust fund proposal, the discount program would be abandoned. Instead, landowners would be paid full price for their land if they donate money to the trust fund.

Committee members said they are reluctant to abandon the discount program because the county may not have enough money to purchase all of the land voters were promised when they approved land purchase program in 1991.

"My concern is having a trust fund that has a lot more money than is needed and then having a shortfall in the acquisition program," said Herb Zebuth, a committee member.